Aside from everything else, you think it’d be easier to add a mustache in CG than take one off, no?

Could I interest you in Deerskin instead?

Well, keep in mind the way Toranaga talked about Yabushige and Blackthorne—goshawks, shortwinged and predictable. Who knows exactly how Toranaga thought things would play out, but he wasn’t sending Yabushige to Osaka to be loyal.

Well, it’s not clear what Ishido’s plan has ever been beyond short-term control? His pursuit of Lady Ochiba, for instance, doesn’t suggest that he’s looking to undermine or supplant the heir.

The first question’s addressed directly in the movie itself, no? Cassie had some sort of blood abnormality that her mom was trying to treat, and Cassie grew up not knowing this because the spider-water-birth had cured her?

So: I’m loving the show, but never read the book or watched the old miniseries. I appreciate the care the writers have put into most of the female characters, but Mariko feels like an unsalvageable mess given that she’s the one who has to fall for Blackthorne.

Well, I don’t think it’s blackmail, but Gin’s actions in this episode don’t really fit together. She winds up Omi to get Buntaro mad(der) about Blackthorne, and it’s anybody’s guess how the assassination plot was arranged. But that doesn’t feel like a Toranaga plan because killing Saeki doesn’t change his basic…

Sylvie talks about it a bit in the first season. She barely remembers any of it, and has been on the run from the TVA since she was a child. I don’t think she ever speaks to an inability to go home because it no longer exists or because it’s not safe, but it feels like the show makes a conscious effort to steer away…

Re: the End of Time stuff, I’d guess Miss Minutes has a way to get them back out, but Renslayer’s TemPad would’ve either been taken or destroyed before she was flung off the boat?

Re: Huyang talking about Kanan/Caleb, he does use both names. I’d never watched any of the cartoons so I wasn’t sure if it was a callback or a subtitle error, but didn’t think it was especially important to the plot either way.

Oh sure, I just think the cast of this show’s getting a lot of blame for what’s mostly bad writing--for instance, this episode continuing to duck what’ll happen when Ezra finds out what getting home cost.

Well, and the thing about Moon Knight is that it was kept as distinct from the MCU as the writers were allowed. I don’t remember what the plans were to maybe have him meet up with Blade/etc. in the future, but Moon Knight functions as a story of Steven/Marc/Jake learning to live with each other in a way that Ahsoka…

They should either recast or, if they want to mention anybody from the OT, it should be as inconsequential as possible. Having Leia be an offscreen plot device raises far more questions than it answers.

The title’s not great, but everything that’ll determine whether this movie is especially good or not probably can’t come through in a trailer, since good or bad it’s probably going to be tropey af.

Well, it’s not really Winstead’s fault, though. This series doesn’t really give most of the characters any depth and the main thing Hera gets to do is tell us that she’s a general.

And there wasn’t any time for Thrawn to do anything else cool, because that other person had to have a fight scene against random unknown bandits that *re-reads the above* ... had zero impact on the story?

That’s as silly, though. Even if it’s something Ahsoka wrestled with all through Rebels, etc., it’s not something this show has spent any time on. What would being like Anakin even mean here? There’s nobody to massacre, and nobody’s tragically foretold death to prevent.

Well, not just the Thrawn thing, the thirst for Ezra which drew Ahsoka back to Sabine.

What does Ahsoka learn, exactly? That she “wants to live?” That’s not new information for her or her audience. She always wanted to live.

Yes, but also part of what feels so flattening is that I don’t feel like the show even gives us much insight into the characters who are on screen. It feels like Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s getting a lot of shit for playing a character whose onscreen presence amounts to telling us repeatedly that she’s a general and…